Accurate Data Match and Call Method for the Thermal Compensation Database of the Reflector Antenna

Abstract

The influence of thermal deformation on the performance of the reflector antenna has become more and more significant with the increasing aperture as well as working frequency. The use of thermal compensation database is an efficient method to compensate the deformation caused by non-uniform temperature distribution. However, how to efficiently and accurately match and call the database remains as one of the tough challenges for the antenna thermal compensation system to achieve real time compensation. Therefore, this paper has proposed a data match and call method for the thermal compensation database of reflector antenna, matching the database from three aspects: the overall RMS match of temperature data, the similarity area match of each data sample, and the key area match of key structural positions. The validation of this method has been demonstrated by an example. The difference between the pointing adjustment amount calculated by the matched data and the collected data was found to be less than 1 arcsec, which satisfied the requirement of practical engineering, and thus achieving real time thermal compensation of the antenna.